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This is the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole station, where weather conditions
demand endurance much similar to conditions at Kargil Heights. In case you are
lucky and it’s the Antarctic summer, there may be 250 people to cheer your
arrival. During rest of the year you will find only one-fifth that number.
Thrill- ed, are you?"
Wait. It might be an idea to read some more...there is no road-link to the
place. There is no sun for half the year. The nearest place to get supplies is
1,287 km away. The nearest city is some 4,800 km away. The only way to get there
is by plane and that too if weather permits. What’s more, with limited
bandwidth available, communication with the rest of the world is extremely
limited. All e-mails are censored to ensure that only business-related
communications take place. For personal communication, a ham radio is to be used
to patch to the phone system in the US, with sometimes four people listening to
your call.
Not anymore…all this has changed since Jeff Thompson, the network engineer
for the United States Antarctic Program, and his colleagues first tried out
voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP, in 1999. Compare this with the hostile
conditions at Siachen or other border areas and the benefits that can accrue
through the use of IP telephony…you will be left wondering why our defense
forces have not yet implemented it.
Did you say ‘legal hassles'? Let us see what experts say.
Jangoo Dalal, head, enterprise, Cisco India, says corporates have been using
VoIP for some time now. ‘‘VoIP has been deployed in corporate networks for
the last two years and more, with organizations running their entire businesses
on this platform. Incidentally, VoIP as opposed to Internet telephony is
perfectly legal and allowed in India."
Adds Ravi Chauhan, vice-president, for enterprise solutions, Nortel Networks
India, ‘‘The technology of running voice services over packet networks is
wrongly misconstrued as VoIP, which is just one aspect of the whole function.
The other two aspects being telephony over IP networks, which is commonly known
as IP Telephony and telephony over Internet, also referred to as Internet
telephony.’’
Mahendra Saxena, managing director, Sapphire Callnet, has this to say:
"The law says that you cannot connect PSTN or FXO to the VoIP terminal in
India. However, in case you have a leased circuit between different branches of
your office, you can implement it. The bottomline is that VoIP should not be put
on a public or shared network. In fact, unlike popular belief, it is also
perfectly legal to use VoIP in India if you are connected to an overseas
network. The only rider is no call should originate over the medium from here.
Receiving calls on VoIP is also not prohibited."
So what is VoIP and what is not, one may wonder. Though the line may seem
very thin, it is distinct enough to distinguish between them.
It’s all in the name!
VoIP will take many years, especially for larger enterprises, but it will
ultimately replace traditional PBXs"
Vijay Yadav, country manager CommWorks, India
Unlike Shakespeare, who thought there was not much in the name, technocrats
tend to christen their inventions and products more often on the basis on their
functionality or the basic principles governing them. VoIP is not an exception
either. While the emergence of IP telephony is often associated with the rise of
Internet itself, it is important to understand that that IP telephony often does
not involve public Internet at all–but rather only its underlaying technology,
the Internet Protocol suite.
Tackling the issue head on, the International Telecommunication Union, in its
background paper for IP Telephony Workshop held in Geneva in June, has this to
say: ‘The most important threshold issue relating to IP telephony concerns
definition. It is a generic term used for the many different ways of
transmitting voice, fax and related services over packet-switched IP-based
networks." ITU divides IP telephony into two major groups–Internet
telephony and VoIP–the difference being the nature of the underlying IP
network.
While VoIP and IP telephony primarily use private managed networks like
leased lines and VSAT networks, Internet telephony essentially uses the public
Internet to bypass the PSTN networks. Chauhan makes it clearer when he says,
‘‘The word ‘Internet’ in Internet telephony focuses on the transport
mechanism. It is also an all-encompassing term used to describe the gambit of
packet-based technology–IP, ATM, frame relay, wireless packet networks, and
all.’’
Experts agree that conceptually Internet telephony is delivering today’s
telephony services over a common packet network like the Internet, and hence the
reason for storm in the cup of DoT in India. VoIP, on the other hand being
independent of the public Internet can fly without caring much about the
Convergence Bill.
Why the hullabaloo?
The confusion in India over IP telephony is much to do about nothing. While
people have been debating the issue for long, not many have cared to understand
the fine distinction that exists. The chaos has been further increasing with the
government and its agencies–DoT and Telecom Commission–not caring to clarify
the issue.
Shyamal Ghosh, DoT secretary and chairman, Telecom Commission chairman, has
recently been quoted in the media as saying, ‘‘The government is willing to
open up Internet telephony, but only after three factors are firmly dealt with
and thoroughly examined. First, a ‘plausible solution’ where services may be
available to all and not just to people who have PCs; second, a ‘tariff and
license free’ balancing of VoIP services alongside terrestrial and mobile
telephony; and third, a ‘strong assurance’ that the services will not create
a digital divide.’’
The senior manager of a telecom company has this to say: ‘‘It seems the
government does not understand what it is talking about, at least not the
technology. Or perhaps it presumes that the country is pretty clear about the
issue.’’ While no attempt has ever been made by the government agencies to
clear this confusion, most of the government statements have been confined to
Internet telephony alone. A case in point is a recent government document that
calls for lifting of the ban on Internet telephony.
So the name does matter after all, Mr Shakespeare!
As far as the existing laws are concerned, the ban in India is only on
Internet telephony. This essentially means that no voice call that bypasses the
PSTN networks and uses the public Internet is allowed. As such all PC to PC, PC
to phone and phone to phone calls over the Internet are considered illegal and
liable for punishment. Besides, ISPs or for that matter any other service
provider who have not been licensed to offer voice services are not allowed to
do so services and compete with basic service providers outside a closed user
group.
Says Dalal, "From an enterprise perspective, there is no legislative
hurdle in India, as VoIP is perfectly legal. Many large corporates in India have
been running VoIP networks on the wide area networking (WAN) for the last many
years. Even the IP-PBX technology is legally allowed in India, and has seen
widespread customer acceptance over the last nine months.’’ Confirms a
senior DoT official, ‘‘There is no ban on IP telephony per se. There is no
ban on a licensed basic or long distance service provider deploying an IP
backbone and carrying voice traffic over an IP network. The service provider is
free to offer any type of application that is possible on a VoIP network, that
is, a managed Internet network.’’
According to him, ‘‘Even basic telephony service providers are allowed to
add IP capabilities to their existing circuit switched networks and BSNL, as
well as Bharti Telenet Limited (in Madhya Pradesh) are already doing this.’’
The Indian government also does not prohibit closed user group Internet
Telephony or VoIP. This means that if an organization wants to set up IP-based
intra-organization voice network, it is free to do so. It can freely use the
services of ISPs or any other service provider for this.
But is the technology mature enough, for it was only in 1995 that VoIP as a
concept was first introduced. Also, are we ready for it and what is the driving
factor? Let us take the first issue first.
It’s raring to go…
prevents enterprises in India from using
VoIP, which is perfectly legal.
IP-PBX technology is also allowed"
Jangoo Dalal, enterprise
applications chief, Cisco
Raymond Keneipp, director and principal analyst, for The Burton Group in
Earlysville, Va., believes that the VoIP technology is stable enough to start
deploying in small offices and branch offices of larger enterprises. On the
other hand, Jai Dhar Gupta, CEO, Verette, the California based CRM services
company, says that VoIP is fully ready for prime time. ‘‘Our VoIP-providing
partner, Cisco Systems, itself has over 22,000 IP phones on its network
extensively exploiting the technology. Also, a number of large enterprises are
deploying it across the globe and the feedback has been quite positive.’’
Says Chauhan, ‘‘Yes, it is commercially viable with a very good ROI. But
the user needs to take care of engineering the bandwidth in the right fashion.’’
According to him, while VoIP networks with voice transport would function mainly
as hotlines across different locations the IP telephony networks over users
private networks can also be equally viable. Besides, with the kind of rich
services that it has to offer IP telephony can enable the users to launch new
services on the existing packet-based IP network. This not only means good ROI,
but also reduced total cost of ownership (TCO).
According to Dalal, VoIP as a technology has evolved a lot in the last three
years. It started off as a technology of choice for WAN operations that would
enable enterprises to run both their data and voice traffic over a single
unified network. The technology uses routers to break into packets the
traditional circuit switched voice originating in PBXs and send it through a
standard leased circuit along with data packets. This has further evolved over
the last 12 months, to now enable voice to start its life right from the
telephone instrument (IP-Telephone) as packetized data. It is then switched
in-premise using an open standards- based platform, like the IP-PBX. Such a
platform also enables a host of value-added services like unified messaging
(UMS).
Not that VoIP is a perfect system without problems (see Locks & Keys) but
then like any other technology it’s growing and improving.
…but are we ready?
"Infrastructure services in India are substandard. Even when an enterprise pays for bandwidth, the quality is bad, leading to packet loss and dropped calls" Jai Gupta, CEO, Verette |
Confusion and legalities apart, is the country really ready to reap the
benefits of VoIP, not to talk about IP telephony? ‘‘There is no problem with
the technology per se,’’ says Keneipp, adding that, ‘‘the problem is
more related to migration issues. Most of the existing data networks that
enterprises have, in India or elsewhere, are not ready to support voice. An
example of this is power (AC Power) to the phones. Today if there is a power
outage, the PBX supplies power to the phone so people can still make calls. In a
VoIP network not only do you have to provide back-up power to the phone you have
to backup every switch and router in the path between the phone and gatekeeper (softswitch),
very few networks have that kind of redundancy today.’’
Adds Gupta, ‘‘The current state of infrastructure services in India is
quite frankly still substandard. Even if a company is willing to pay for
dedicated bandwidth, the quality is poor in regard to data packet loss and
signal-to-noise ratio, not to mention dropped calls. Performance from providers
is spotty, and there certainly is no 24-hour ‘around the clock’ guarantee of
consistent reliable service from providers. Midnight to 6:00 AM is simply not an
acceptable time window for fast, reliable service for companies needing to
compete in the global marketplace.’’
Experts like Vijay Yadav, country manager, CommWorks, a 3Com company, believe
that while the quality of service (QoS) is pretty much manageable over leased
and managed networks within the organisations, it becomes quite difficult in
case of Internet telephony. ‘‘QoS is a non issue within a premise, however,
the same cannot be said about the Internet,’’ says Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala,
head, electronic engineering department, IIT Chennai. The issue of Internet is a
matter of concern because sooner or later India would be relaxing its rules over
Internet telephony and that would pave way for other IP telephony facilities.
Also, enterprises already over the VoIP can then use the medium to link remote
sites through it.
"The key to QoS when implementing international VoIP" says Gupta,
"is the dedicated end-to-end circuits. For example, a voice call coming
into our Livermore California operation can be put through our international
private leased circuit (IPLC) with ‘fiber optic to the curb’ functionality
in our build process. This allows for complete clarity of signal, elimination of
noise interference, and outstanding 24x7 reliability with the client’s
customer hardly realizing that the call is being transferred over IP, let alone
over an international circuit."
However, the situation is not as bad as it may seem. The international VoIP
market is over $20 billion and the Indian market paints a promising picture. The
market for IP-based value added services in India are estimated to touch Rs
2,000 crore by 2004. No wonder then, almost all leading networking giants–Cisco,
Nortel, 3Com, Dialogic to name a few–have chalked out their VoIP strategy for
India.
While Cisco’s existing VoIP range includes IP-phones, voice network
switching systems, gateways and controllers, integrated communication system and
call the company also has plans to launch its architecture for voice, video and
integrated data (AVVID) very soon in the country. Similarly, 3Com has VoIP
gateway services and a total control multi-services platform which allow
carriers, network service providers, ISPs and enterprise customers to build the
framework necessary to roll out voice services on a mass scale. Nortel Networks
has Shasta 5000, a broadband service node (BSN) to deliver managed IP-VPN
services.
But are these reasons enough to dump the existing, reliable friend–the PBX–at
the enterprise level, more so with the price of long distance calls falling
globally as well as in the country. In fact, according to sources in the telecom
ministry, the government is seriously considering a huge cut in call tariffs of
conventional circuit switched telephony by at least 50% before taking a decision
on lifting the ban over Internet telephony. So has VoIP lost the cost advantage?
Why VoIP at all?
Building a strong case for VoIP is Yadav. According to him, ‘‘Though it
will take many years for most large enterprise to completely transition their
networks, we believe that VoIP will ultimately be successful in replacing the
traditional PBXs.’’
The main drivers for consolidations, he says, would be the new applications
and ease of administration.
Adds Keneipp, ‘‘There is no doubt that the PSTN will be around for many
years, maybe another hundred years because it works. That doesn’t mean that
the infrastructure won’t change. I think the backbone of the PSTN will
transition to a packet-based system during the next 15 years. The customer will
not see the this change, they will still be able to pick up a phone and dial a
number but the voice will get wrapped in IP and sent to the other end over an IP
network instead of a circuit switched network."
What this means is pure economics. It would be the single most significant
reason for both the service providers and the users to adopt VoIP. Besides,
there are a whole lot of applications that an IP-based system is able to
support, not to forget other parameters where it scores over the traditional
system. By shifting to packet switching system, carriers can significantly cut
down on their costs through optimum utilization of their network capacity or
bandwidth. What this means is that, they would be able to carry both voice and
data over the IP network at a far lower cost.
This saving in cost can actually be passed on to the end users, either in
terms of lower tariffs or value-added services. According to experts, the usage
of compression techniques, silence suppression techniques the VoIP system has
the capability of bringing down the per call bandwidth usage to one-fourth from
the current levels. Not to forget the fact that it is one of the most efficient
tools of communication over a managed IP network–even in challenging
conditions of Antarctica.
Perhaps, over the heights of Kargil where even eagles don’t dare, VoIP
would one day become the lifeline of sharing vital information. Perhaps then,
the country would be spared another similar war.
Shubhendu Parth in New Delhi